Prolific voice actor Nolan North, best known for his role as Nathan Drake in the Uncharted series, claims that he didn't know his Assassin's Creed character Desmond Miles had been killed off until a fan wrote to him on social media.
Speaking on the Fall Damage YouTube channel, North is asked to recall some of his most famous lines. When confronted with the line "You know it's true. It's already started. I need to go do this now. So go!", he immediately recognizes it as Desmond's final lines from Assassin's Creed 3. "That technically was Desmond's death scene," North recalls. "And I didn't know it."
In fact, Ubisoft wasn't the one to tell him that he wouldn't be reprising the role. Instead, it was a fan on Twitter who asked him how he felt about his character's fate. "I found out on Twitter. 'Are you upset [that] Desmond's dead?' And I'm thinking, 'what?'" North says. "Because there's no 'Ahhhhh!' There's nothing that you'd expect from a main character's death."
North reached out to the team, which tried to give him hope, but we haven't seen Desmond return to the series. "The good people at Ubisoft have told me that 'he's not technically dead,'" North says, noting that he believes "the original idea was eight or nine games with Desmond."
Alas, this wasn't meant to be. "As it so often goes in the entertainment industry, different developers, different creative directors come in, and they have their own way of continuing the story."
He might be understanding, but it doesn't mean he's not disappointed. "I was very sad to step away from the role of Desmond," North explains. "Because Assassin's Creed is one of my favorite stories that I've ever been a part of."
